Portland House Nursery, based in Lindley, has once again been rated ‘outstanding’ in every category by Ofsted.
Outstanding is the highest judgment that can be made by an Ofsted inspector and is given only when there is exceptional childcare provision that greatly exceeds national standards.
This is the fourth consecutive time that Portland House has received an Outstanding rating.
In the report an Ofsted inspector said: “The children look forward to attending this stimulating, exciting and safe nursery. They receive a broad range of carefully planned experiences that consistently build on what they already know and can do.
“As a result, children become deeply absorbed in their play and they behave extremely well. This helps them to become motivated and develop very positive attitudes to learning. Consequently, children make excellent progress.”
The Inspector added: “Staff are highly skilled in the ways in which they support children’s communication skills. For example, babies learn to use simple sign language alongside spoken words. This helps them to be able to communicate their wants and needs as they learn to speak.”
Ofsted reported that all outcomes for all children were outstanding and said: “Parents and carers praise the dedicated and caring nursery staff.
“They describe how staff have helped their children to flourish and make the best possible progress. Parents are highly confident in leaders’ abilities to make sure that the individual needs of their children are met.”
The Ofsted inspector went on to praise the leadership and added: “Leaders are highly committed to working closely with staff.
“They seek staff’s views on their interests and personal development needs. This supports leaders to provide a carefully considered training programme that is tailored to meet the needs of children and staff.
“This, in turn, ensures that the skills and knowledge of staff continues to improve to higher levels.”
Nursery manager Julie Lister, who has been with the company for over 25 years, praised her staff team and said: “I am immeasurably proud of this achievement, as I know the staff team have worked so hard to deliver the very best for the children in our care by constantly developing the nursery and our practice to keep standards high.
“I feel very proud of our achievement knowing that we are continuing to provide the best we can for the children in our care.”
Portland Nurseries managing director Anastasia Murphy said: “I am immensely proud of all the staff across the company who have worked very hard supporting each other to become good reflective practitioners.
“We have always invested heavily in the training of the staff and encouraged them to maintain our high standards and it is wonderful that this dedication and hard work has been recognised once again.
“The nursery has been part of the community for 32 years and we’ve seen children grown up and become parents, bringing their own children back to Portland House for the same standard of care and education they received.
“We have worked hard to continue to provide industry-leading levels of service across the Portland Nurseries settings and we look forward to continuing to do that for years to come.”
